Category Archives: coldbrook studio

“I know you are but what am I?” “I’m rubber, you are glue. Names bounce off me and stick to you!”

When Pee Wee Hermansays such things, we recognize at once how puerile they are. When Pee Wee says them, though, they are alloyed with childhood innocence, which gives them a pleasant, if a little edgy, nostalgic glow. They are child-like, not childish.

When the President of the United States plays the Pee Wee gambit, it seems childish and churlish. It insults our intelligence. It is also dangerous.

Remember the debates? Looming over Hillary from behind, playing the cameras like the seasoned TV performer he is, while using his height and sheer bulk to intimidate, like the sexual predator he is?

She said, referring to his relationship with the post-Soviet oligarchy: “You’re a puppet.”

Without elaborating, out of turn, as a practiced casual aside (though he surely knew the camera was on him), he said :

“Puppet? I’m not a puppet. You’re the puppet!”

Clinton was, clearly and unequivocally, accusing him of being an agent of a specific foreign power, Russia. He might have been implying that she was too beholden to unnamed gigantic donors on Wall Street and in Hollywood, but he never actually specified who was pulling the strings. He wanted to establish a sense of equivalency where none actually existed. His target was affective, not cognitive. Specificity does not suit his purpose. He wants you angry, not informed.

Such false equivalency is an important weapon in the Trump arsenal, the heart and soul of the Pee Wee Gambit.

This is nowhere more evident than in the speech he gave outside Trump Tower a few days after a ragtag mob of Ku Klux Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, gun rights advocates and simple thugs had gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia under the rubric ‘alt-right’, ostensibly to protect a statue of a man who led an armed uprising that attacked America in a desparate attempt to preserve black slavery when the tide of history was turning against it. In the melee nineteen protesters were injured and Heather Heyer, a principled young woman who had come to protest the violence and hatred, was murdered when an avowed white supremacist rammed his car onto a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters that was boxed into a narrow, crowded street.

Shortly afterwards Trump read from a teleprompter a lackluster statement that denounced hatred and violence without naming any of the violent haters. Later, though, Trump spoke off-the-cuff to a boisterous gaggle of reporters in front of Trump Tower. He clearly viewed the crowd as hostile to him. He was flanked by members of his cabinet–an Asian woman and two Jews–who visibly squirmed in their discomfort at his remarks. His Chief of Staff stood apart, arms clasped tensely in front of him, glowering down at his own wing-tips. The event sounded more like an argument than a press conference as Trump responded to the questions hurled at him:

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you putting what you’re calling the alt-left and white supremacists on the same moral plane?

TRUMP: I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane. What I’m saying is this. You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other, and they came at each other with clubs and it was viscous and it was horrible. And it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side, you can call them the left. You’ve just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.

(unintelligible Crosstalk)

TRUMP: Well, I do think there’s blame — yes, I think there’s blame on both sides. You look at — you look at both sides. I think there’s blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either.

With the idea (or more accurately, the affective impression) of equivalency thus planted, Mr. Trump uncharacteristically got much more specific:

TRUMP: Excuse me, excuse me. (inaudiblie) themselves (inaudible) and you have some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me — I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same (inaudible)…

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So, will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down — excuse me — are we going to take down — are we going to

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: OK. Good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? So you know what? It’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people, and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You’ve got — you had a lot of bad — you had a lot of bad people in the other group… take down statues to George Washington?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: … treated unfairly (inaudible) you were saying. You were saying the press has treated white nationalists unfairly? (inaudible) understand what you’re saying.

TRUMP: No, no. There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day, it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest and very legally protest, because you know — I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So, I only tell you this, there are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country, a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country (sic).

The equivalency is reinforced in affect even as the facts are obscured in a blizzard of inaccuracy and irrelevance. The obscurity is amplified by POTUS’ peculiar patterns of speech; his meaning is clouded more by his fractured syntax than the depth of his thought, closer to E.E. Cummings than T.S. Eliot. Though he went to an Ivy League school, he does not seem to have learned the value of a complete sentence. He does use simple ones, though, in his familiar, snarky asides: You know what mean. You get it. Am I right? You’re the puppet! (See Spot run?)

Washington and Jefferson vs Robert E. Lee? These men were of different eras. The former were slaveholders in the eighteenth century, true enough, but beside the point. Both were even then growing leery of the morality behind an institution on which their economy still depended, and neither led an armed rebellion against the Union they created. Lee resorted to a treasonous war in an attempt to extend the chattel servitude of blacks into the last half of a nineteenth century, fifty years after Washington and Jefferson thought they were witnessing the twilight of slavery in America. The founding fathers’ ownership of slaves was not the equivalent of Lee’s, nor is it relevant to what happened at Charlottesville.

The self proclaimed alt-right had a permit to assemble, while the counter-protestors did not? Even if this were true, the permits only applied to designated parts of Robert E Lee/Emancipation Park, and not to Market Street, where the melee with Antifa took place, or to Fourth Street, where Heather Heyer was mowed down by an angry white supremacist. No one had a permit to battle in the streets with helmets, shields and clubs. No one had a license to kill.

Violence occurred streets throughout the city, involving small bands of armed, angry people holding diverse political views. While the marching, and later the street fighting, was going on, the status of permits was not relevant, not even very interesting. No one gets the moral high ground because of the status permits.

Trump pivots from the issue of ‘moral equivalence’, and makes the point that many people “on both sides” came with the aim of peacefully protesting the removal of Lee’s statue. This is true as far as it goes, but it obscures the fact that the rally, called “Unite the Right”, was meant to cement various organizations on the far right—The KKK, the Aryan Nations, the NRA, and the Westboro Baptist Church, for example—into a coherent political movement. They marched through the streets at night, some girded for war and many carrying tiki torches, chanting things like “The Jews will not replace us!”

On the left there was no such uniting principle. There was a grass-roots yearning to not let hate speech go unopposed, but was there premeditated violence among among participants with progressive political views? Yes, there was, as evidenced by those who brought shields and clubs, but their stated motive was to resist the spread Neo-Facismism and white supremacy. Is hating Nazis equivalent to hating blacks? Is resisting hate mongering the equivalent of the hate mongering itself?

Having inured us to false equivalencies and the Pee Wee Gambit, Trump is now free to take it where he will. This week he has soared to new heights with the assertion that not only are the allegations of his campaign’s collusion with the Russians to fix the 2016 elections a nefarious false narrative, invented by the Democrats to excuse their ‘historic’ drubbing at the polls. Instead, says POTUS, the Democrats themselves are guilty of collusion, but have escaped investigative scrutiny for their heinous crimes because of their controlling interest in the permanent, unelected shadow government that has dogged Trump since he first descended the golden elevator to announce the start of his campaign to Make America Great Again.

The facts of this uranium deal are much more complex. Here is how Wikipedia summarizes the deal:

(Warning–Rough seas ahead: Like much in politics it can be a difficult slog to understand who the players were, and how the game unfolded.)

On July 5, 2005, Southern Cross Resources Inc. and Aflease Gold and Uranium Resources Ltd announced that they would be merging under the name SXR Uranium One Inc.[3]

In 2007 Uranium One acquired a controlling interest in UrAsia Energy,[4] a Canadian firm with headquarters in Vancouver, from Frank Giustra.[5] UrAsia Energy has interests in rich uranium operations in Kazakhstan.[6] UrAsia Energy’s acquisition of its Kazakhstan uranium interests from Kazatomprom followed a trip to Almaty in 2005 by Giustra and former U.S. PresidentBill Clinton where they met with Nursultan Nazarbayev, the leader of Kazakhstan. Substantial contributions to the Clinton Foundation by Giustra followed,[5][7] with Clinton, Giustra, and Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim in 2007 establishing the Clinton Foundation’s Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative to combat poverty in the developing world.[8] In addition to his initial contribution of $100 million Giustra pledged to contribute half of his future earnings from mining to the initiative.[8]

In June 2009, the Russian uranium mining company ARMZ Uranium Holding Co. (ARMZ), a part of Rosatom, acquired 16.6% of shares in Uranium One in exchange for a 50% interest in the Karatauuranium mining project, a joint venture with Kazatomprom.[9] In June 2010, Uranium One acquired 50% and 49% respective interests in southern Kazakhstan-based Akbastau and Zarechnoye uranium mines from ARMZ. In exchange, ARMZ increased its stake in Uranium One to 51%. The acquisition resulted in a 60% annual production increase at Uranium One, from approximately 10 million to 16 million lb.[10][11] The deal was subject to anti-trust and other conditions and was not finalized until the companies received Kazakh regulatory approvals, approval under Canadian investment law, clearance by the US Committee on Foreign Investments, and approvals from both the Toronto and Johannesburg stock exchanges. The deal was finalized by the end of 2010.[11] Uranium One paid its minority shareholders a significant dividend of 1.06 US Dollars per share at the end of 2010.

(Congratulations! You have made it through the perilous shoals of links and footnotes. Do you have a firm grasp now on how this relates to the Steele Dossier–almost as complex an issue in its own right– and the purloined Hillary/DNC emails? Trump insists they are are the same issue, smoking-gun proof of a conspiracy against him.)

Was Guistra’s contribution to the Clinton Foundation the payback for Hillary’s cooperation in a deal that enriched the Canadian by allowing him to sell his interest in American uranium to the Russians? That is the snake oil that Trump is trying to sell.

Look through the complexity, though, and that notion does not hold up. The ‘American’ uranium interests were Guistra’s holding in UrAsia, whose ores came mainly from not the within the US, but the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan. The deal was not done in back rooms, but had to be signed off by financial regulators in Kazakhstan, South Africa, Canada, and the US. Hillary’s involvement came via her role of Secretary of State, at a time when there was a functioning State Department with professionals to oversee the diplomatic, political, and financial aspect of the deal, and a functioning ethics infrastructure to monitor its honesty.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?Both events happened, but were not cause and effect. The implication that the uranium deal was at Hillary’s sole discretion is patently false.

Hillary’s influence was hardly the deciding factor. As Secretary of State her input on the deal was as a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which also includes the Secretaries of Treasury, Defense, Labor, Commerce, and Homeland Security, the Attorney General, the US Trade Representative, The Director of the Office of Science and Technology, the National Security Advisor, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. CIFIUS’ primary concern is that technology or funds from American enterprise do not violate sanctions or fall into enemy hands. It reviewed the UrAsia deal, and found no fault. President Obama, who had the final say, signed off on the deal. The idea that Hillary personally overstepped her authority to sell American uranium stocks to Russia for her private gain is easy to comprehend, but simply not true.

Nor is the false equivalency of this evidence of collusion with Russia with Trump’s own possible relationship with Putin valid.

If UraniumOne was a conspiracy, it had to be much bigger than this.

If the accusations against Clinton were true, they would have resulted in a multi-billion dollar initiative to eradicate poverty on the developing world. It the accusations against Trump are true, they have resulted in a subversion of American democracy that may have put him in a position to plunder the country’s economy, and put his twitchy finger on the nuclear button. Moral equivalence? You be the judge.

“Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more,“ Trump said in a pair of tweets on Sunday.

My little girl was married yesterday in Pennsylvania. The groom is a marvellous man whom I both respect and love. I had to stay home on Cape Cod because of a family illness.

My little girl is a lovely woman of considerable grace and accomplishment. Her husband is a handsome man of principle, strength and sensitivity. Their family deserves the best of the best. Always.

While I am filled with magical happiness for them, it made me very sad and lonely, too.

Sarah’s Vows

On our very first date, we went to Bell’s in Lambertville. This was when you found out that I don’t eat red meat. I could tell that you were disappointed, but you hid it well.

Before we ordered, we both thought about ordering the fish special, but you actually got it, and I ended up ordering a pasta dish. I didn’t realize that it had bits of meat in it, and halfway through our meal you noticed that I was picking around it. I told you the problem and you said: Oh, here! Even though both dishes were half eaten, you took my dish and swapped it with yours, giving me your half eaten special and taking the half eaten pasta dish with a little pile of meat bits on the side.

And I thought, oh, okay, that’s….really cool. To me, it was everything that I’ve come to know you are in spades – it was selfless and spontaneous, thoughtful and kind, fun and free, and maybe a little bit kooky, but in the best of possible ways.

This thing that you did on our first date, this impulsive and generous thing, became the first on a long list of things you do and have done that make me love the crap out of you. The list is long – I think I’m up to 1987, (he cries shamelessly and audibly at movies, he cries for a good poem, he makes amazing crepes, he speaks fluent French, he loves and respects his mother, he is a loving and present father, he climbs trees for a living, constant bad dad jokes, for example) but you should know that that was where the list began – that was the first thing that showed me who you are and why you’re the type of person I might just want to spend my life with.

You are the most sincere, loving, genuine, loyal, outgoing, nurturing and beautiful man. I love how you make me feel. You bring me down to earth and you push me out of my everyday skin. You lift me up and you tell me how you see it, whether I want to hear it or not. You are my anchor and my sail, and sometimes the wind too.

I love that you have been knocked down by life. I see everything you have been through, and the grace you have had under pressures of many kinds, and the resiliance you have shown again and again; I see a strong, if stubborn, man. I know that you will weather the worst with me because I’ve seen you down and I know the strength and integrity and force of will you have to stand up stronger and then even offer a helping hand.

I love that you are my partner in every way imaginable, and in ways I never imagined.

Even though I still think that if you had to choose between me and your plants in a house fire I would be out of luck, I forgive you that! Because, I have also been the beneficiary of your green thumb. You have nurtured and coaxed me and helped me grow. You have loved me for who I am, even as that has changed. You have looked at me with pure love in my worst moments. You have walked beside me when I felt like I was struggling down the narrowest of corridors. You did not leave my side, and I know beyond all things, in the cells of my skin, that you never will. I know you will be with me always, and no matter what. I promise that I will do the same, as long as live.

I love that you are package deal. I will not only gain a husband today, but two daughters – two of the coolest, smartest, sassiest daughters out there. I couldn’t be more grateful for the deep and loving relationship I have with them. Today I am officially a step-mother. I am so very proud of that, and of them. Lili and Maddy, OR and I promise to be here for (them) you, in any way I possibly can be, for as long as this life will let me.

And, chris, you gave me Katherine. You made me a mother and fulfilled a dream that I could only touch the edges of understanding before she arrived and blew that dream into this chaotic colorful reality.

You have made with me a life passed the horizon of my hopes – a beautiful, overflowing, and truly unbelievable life. I am so excited to embrace our future. Together.

Thank you. I love you. And I promise never to take any of this, you, our daughters, our lives, for granted.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,And spills the upper boulders in the sun,And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.The work of hunters is another thing:I have come after them and made repairWhere they have left not one stone on a stone,But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,No one has seen them made or heard them made,But at spring mending-time we find them there.I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;And on a day we meet to walk the lineAnd set the wall between us once again.We keep the wall between us as we go.To each the boulders that have fallen to each.And some are loaves and some so nearly ballsWe have to use a spell to make them balance:‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’We wear our fingers rough with handling them.Oh, just another kind of out-door game,One on a side. It comes to little more:There where it is we do not need the wall:He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.

Well-Mended Wall

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonderIf I could put a notion in his head:‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t itWhere there are cows?But here there are no cows.Before I built a wall I’d ask to knowWhat I was walling in or walling out,And to whom I was like to give offence.Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d ratherHe said it for himself. I see him thereBringing a stone grasped firmly by the topIn each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.He moves in darkness as it seems to me~Not of woods only and the shade of trees.He will not go behind his father’s saying,And he likes having thought of it so wellHe says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

–Robert Frost (1914)

Good Neighbors: A West German family enjoys the Berlin Wall –Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1962

Kremlin is a word that really has no English equivalent. Perhaps ‘castle’ or ‘citadel’ comes closest. but even the largest castle is dwarfed by a small kremlin. These words miss something grander, more essentially Russian, about kremlins.

Old Russian cities formed around their kremlins and walled monasteries; in medieval times the line that divided the church from the rich and powerful was indistinct at best, and kremlins girded both the secular and sacred.

The kremlin at Tobolsk

In the countryside around these central structures the serfs tilled the land for the noblemen who dwelt within. Near the gates merchants, tradesmen, artisans and ladies of the night gathered to ply their goods and services. Inside the wall princes and priests plotted their intrigues and their wars. Novgorod, Moscow, Smolensk, Pskov and many other cities had kremlins. There is even a small kremlin in Tobolsk, deep in Siberia, 1500 miles east of Moscow.

***

Between the Carpathian Mountains to the southwest and the Urals to the northeast lies a vast expanse of gently rolling lands known as the Russian Plain, through which meander many long and mighty rivers. Because of the bland topography, these rivers criss-cross the plain in all directions. Their names are rife with history and romance: the Rhine, the Danube, the Dnieper and Dniester, the Volga, the Don. Owing to the relatively flat terrain, these waterways are easily navigable, with gentle currents and few shallows, shoals or rapids. In a pre-industrial world, they provided a watery network, connecting the Baltic, Mediterranean, Black and landlocked Caspian Seas, that facilitated the movement of goods, troops, and culture throughout Eastern Europe.

Control of this area endowed its owner with substantial strategic and economic advantage, but maintaining control was difficult. War-like peoples surrounded it on all sides. To the north were the Norse, renowned for their berserk ferocity. To the south was Byzantium, heir to the efficient Roman war machine. To the west were the barbarous Slavs, and to the east lay the Mongol horde. In the middle lay a loose-knit, polyglot cluster of kingdoms centered in Kiev, known as the lands of the Rus’.

The kremlin at Smolensk

Control of this politically roiling landscape required at least two things: An all-powerful commander of a formidable military force (eventually, the tsars), and a series of impregnable fortresses in which to consolidate control (the kremlins).

A succession of strongmen built fortifications at strategic points along river. The walls of these fortresses were initially made of wood, but were eventually replaced by stone, to become the kremlins we know today.

In the 9th century, the Kievan Rus’ built a citadel on the Dnieper to defend against aggression from the south. This kremlin gave rise to Kiev, which became the the first iteration of what would eventually become Russia. It stood until the Mongols sacked Kiev in 1240; very little remains. The Rus’ then moved their capital to Novgorod, where they constructed another oaken kremlin on the Volkhov River. Stone walls replaced the wooden ones there, beginning in 1302.

The kremlin of Pskov

To the north, in Pleskow (now Pskov), which was allied with the Novgorod Rus’, a kremlin arose where the little Pskov River flows into the larger Velikaya near its mouth on Lake Peipus, the source of the River Neva. Here, in 1240, Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod turned back an invasion of Teutonic Knights in an epic battle on the ice, immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein’s 1938 film masterpiece. (Historians disagree on the reliability of the accounts of this event.) The site controls access by the landlocked lands of Rus’ to the Gulf of Finland, and thus the Baltic Sea. Peter the Great, who dreamed of building a navy and was wont to make his dreams come true, later made his capital near there to give Russia’s interior access to the ocean.

The Grand Principality of Moscow, soon to be Muscovy and then Russia, annexed Novgorod in 1478. This was part of “the gathering of the Rus’ lands by Grand Prince of Moscow Ivan the III, known as Ivan the Great. It was then that the history of modern Russia began, although the word “Russia’ was first used by his grandson Ivan IV, the ‘Terrible’.

At the site of today’s Moscow Kremlin a succession of walls went up and came down. Slavs built an oaken palisade in in the 11th century, known as the Moscow Grad. In the 14th century, a sturdy stronghold of white limestone replaced it.

Ivan the Great

Ivan III replaced the limestone, between 1485 and 1495, with the walls we know today. They are 5 to 19 meters high, 3.5 to 6.5 meters thick, built of stone faced with red brick. Along the top, for its entire perimeter, runs a walkway, 2 to 4.5 meters wide, for is full perimeter, flanked by a 2.5-meters-tall crenelated wall facing outwards, and topped in a swallow-tailed style. The walls contain interior passageways leading to lightless rooms where the tsars’ most dangerous prisoners lived in solitary confinement while they slowly went mad. Twenty defensive towers loom above the walkway, each with a different height and style. Four heavy gates pierce the wall, flanked by gate towers. These are now crowned by illuminated Soviet red stars, which replaced the gilded double-headed eagles of the Romanovs.

The Moscow Kremlin. The tower on the left, called the Secret Tower, holds a secret escape route. The other two towers are the only nameless of the twenty. Within the wall, on the right, is the tall Bell Tower of Ivan the Great. Behind it, to the left, the four golden domes of the Assumption Cathedral peek over the trees. Between the nameless towers the single golden dome of the Archangel’s Cathedral is surrounded by four gray metal domes. and next to it the much smaller Annunciation Cathedral. Behind that is the baroque yellow Grand Palace.

Within the 68 acre triangle enclosed by the Kremlin Wall lie many large buildings, both sacred and secular.

Coronation of Alexander II in the Palace of Facets

The oldest secular building is the Palace of Facets, constructed between 1487 and 1492 to serve the tsars for state ceremonies and official entertainments. Next oldest is the Terem Palace, first residence of the tsars. The Grand Kremlin Palace, commissioned by Tsar Nicholas I and built between 1837 and 1849 in a Baroque style, joins these structures together into one vast government complex.

The Communist Party convenes in the Hall of Congresses in 1966.

The newest building inside the Kremlin is a Soviet-era glass and concrete monstrosity built in Khrushchev’s time as a home for the Congresses of the Communist Party. Because of its large 6000-seat capacity and superb acoustics, today it hosts popular concerts.

Cathedral of the Annunciation

There are several churches within the Kremlin; in a more secular Russia, some of them now serve as museums. The oldest is the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great, which is contemporaneous with the present wall. The most important is the Cathedral of the Assumption, which before the 1917 revolution was a symbol of Russia’s claim of dominance in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The Cathedral of the Annunciation was once reserved as a private place for princes and tsars to worship, and the Cathedral of the Archangel was the final resting place medieval Russian autocrats. The Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles contained the lavish Patriarch’s Palace, and the Church of the Deposition of the Robe was a private chapel for the Patriarchate.

The church most often associated with the Kremlin by Americans is the Cathedral of Basil the Great, with its colorful bouquet of onion domes. It actually lies outside the Kremlin. It was built from 1555-1561 on orders of Ivan IV, known as ‘the Formidible’ (more literal), or more commonly today, ‘the Terrible’, (which is a more apt description of the man). To commemorate his conquests of Kazan and Astrakahn, and to praise the glory of God, it was built in the shape of flames leaping skyward. It was consecrated in 1561 and secularized by the Soviets in 1928, today it is owned by the Russian Federation and serves as a museum.

Today the Kremlin is the capitol of the Russian Federation. Its hegemony, under the firm hand of Vladimir Putin, reaches across the vast expanse of Russia, and who knows how far beyond.

“I have used the laws of this country just like the greatest people that you read about every day in business have used the laws of this country, the chapter laws, to do a great job for my company, for myself, for my employees, for my family, et cetera….

…I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.”

–Donald Trump, who filed for bankruptcy four times

$$$$$$

That makes sense. Big Businesses, like Trump’s, exploit multitudes of common people for their labor, and vacuum up their cash for the private benefit of a few large stockholders and elite executives. That is Capitalism, and it is good.

–Leona Helmsley, NYC Real Estate & Hotel Mogul, who was jailed in 1992 for tax evasion and business fraud.

“It makes me smart.”

–Donald Trump, on not paying any taxes. He was elected President of the United States in 2016.

Leona Helmsley, “The Queen of Mean”, was successfully prosecuted by then U.S. Attorney (and now Trump sycophant) Rudy Giuliani for income tax evasion and fraudulent business practices. She reported to prison on April 15, 1992, the day personal taxes fall due. Prisoner No.15113-054, estimated net worth over five billion dollars, served nineteen months in federal prison. Upon release she had to sell all her NY hotels, most of which sold drinks, because New York law does not allow convicted felons to hold liquor licenses.

At the same time Donald Trump was building his real estate and hotel empire in New York and beyond, allegedly committing many of the same heinous acts that sent Helmsley to jail. Now he is the leader of the free world.

Donald Trump did not invent the tweet, nor the political tweet. Not even the presidential tweet. The art of the epigram, or tweet, has been around for centuries, and many masters have come and gone. Consider this gem, tweeted fully half a millenium ago, which practically defines the genre:

The history of the tweet goes way farther back than that. Over a millennium earlier, another gifted twittermeister had a nearly identical thought:

Nor is this the oldest surviving tweet. This one comes from two centuries earlier:

The turn of the 18th century was a fruitful time for the tweet. Alexander Pope’s long poems barely survive, but the tweets he set like jewels within them continue to gleam . I know you’ve heard this one:

and this one, which might have been a DM to President Trump:

Trump may have passed on the inspirational tweets of Pope, preferring the acerbic wit of Pope’s contemporary, Jonathan Swift. If this tweet had been written in he first person singular, it might have come from Trump himself:

Although all of Swift’s wisdom might not be welcome:

These tweets ushered in the Age of Enlightenment, which may have brought us the greatest tweeter of all time:

Franklin may not have invented the political tweet, but he certainly perfected it. His advice to American patriots is remembered long after the war ended.

He could be a lot more pointed, too. This one foreshadows John C. Calhoun’s warnings, fifty years later, about the tyranny of the majority.

The presidential tweet was a natural follower of the political tweet. It first reached full flower in the hands of a master—President Abraham Lincoln.

Both Roosevelts had the knack, too. Theodore Roosevelt, who actually made his living as a best-selling author both before and after his presidency, had this advice to the common man:

This advice, intended for presidents but widely applicable, is perhaps TRs most successful tweet:

The mid 20th century brought a virtual golden age of the political tweet, including the presidential tweet:

Franklin Roosevelt was a Democrat, and his tweets sometimes seem to address the 21st century GOP, enhancing his status as a political clairvoyant:

And there is this DM to Paul Ryan from both Roosevelts:

Other memorable 20th century presidential tweets include Truman’s about where the buck stops, Eisenhower’s to beware the military-industrial complex, and Kennedy’s plea to ask not what your country can do…etc. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator, was a master of the presidential tweet.

Even into the twenty first century, the presidential tweet flourished. The homespun, self-deprecating humor that sometimes bubbled up in presidential tweets from Lincoln to Reagan became a dominant theme in the opening decades.

In 2016 the nature of the presidential tweet changed. Previous presidents used Tweets to communicate directly with their constituents, humanizing their images. The humor let us see brief glimpses into the hearts of the men who occupied the Oval Office. Policy and fact did not enter into most of these tweets; this would have not been consistent with their intimate purpose.

Donald Trump has changed all that. He seems oddly unwilling, or unable, to relate to people on a human level. His tweets seem aimed at manipulation rather than revelation. They are seldom humorous, except for a ubiquitous, smarmy sarcasm, and they never self-deprecating. They are chockablock full of “alternative facts” unencumbered by even a hint of proof. This made up data is often used to defend nasty attacks on people and institutions that without them would have no foundation at all.

They are sometimes laced with a creepy paranoia which feels particularly out of place in a President of the United States and Commander in Chief.

Perhaps saddest of all, the literary quality of these neo-epigrams vanished when their purpose became propaganda. I know that this has no significance in the grand political scheme of things. The epigram—the tweet—has been an art form for millennia; I hate to see it go. In the end, cultures are remembered by the art they leave behind, often in the remains of practical objects: shards of pottery, battered cutlery, bits of personal adornment. If artificial intelligence ever scans the autistic, ADD-riven snippets of our government today, they will surely conclude that there were virtual Visigoths at our cybergate.

Sometimes a news photo so completely reflects the tenor of its time that it survives intact, becoming a bit of history itself: the Vietnamese children fleeing, naked and terrified, from the flaming horrors of war that pursue them. The mother in Minimata tenderly bathing her grown child, who was maimed, even before he was born, by industrial indifference. The man confronting a line of tanks in Tienanmen Square, and winning that battle if not the war. These pictures woke the world, and helped to make it permanently better. Joe Giddens’ picture deserves a place in this pantheon.

Let us never forget that resistance is not always a fist in the air. To resist evil requires us to show that there is a way to be something better, to go somewhere higher. Sometimes all that takes is a smile.

*** *** ***

Birmingham, UK – Saturday April 8 2017

When the English Defence League held a “non-violent” anti-Islam rally in Birmingham’s Centenary Square, the tension in the air was palpable. For the EDL, “non-violence” does not preclude the use of intimidation; their rallies often end in physical strife. Police presence at such gatherings is routine.

The Birmingham Central Mosque responded to the event by opening its doors and inviting everyone, regardless of caste, race, beliefs, or role in life, to come in for tea. At the EDL demonstration, woman in a hijab was less accommodating. When she shouted “No more Islamophobia! No more wars!” from the periphery of the roiling crowd, she was immediately mobbed by 20 or more burly white supremacists.

That is when Saffiyah Khan stepped forward. Khan, 25, a Brummie by birth with Muslim family in Bosnia and Pakistan, came to the aid of the embattled woman, drawing much of the fury onto herself. When EDL leader Ian Crossland leaned in and shook his fist in Khan’s face, a policeman intervened, and both of them were led away. Khan maintained her calm, and her beatific smile, throughout the incident, despite all the bluster that surrounded her.

Press Association photographer Joe Giddens caught the moment that perfectly reflects encounter—the courage of a young woman and a police officer holding their ground in a bubble of hatred.

“It is more important to smile than to shout,” Khan later told reporters.

“The dirty unwashed left wing scrubber was grinning because she managed to disrupt a demo.” Crossland wrote on Facebook afterwards. “And the disrespectful witch chose the minute’s silence for the victims of the terror attack in Stockholm and Westminster. She’s lucky she got any teeth left.”

Ethnic problems no doubt plague the Midlands, just as they do the UK, Europe, the US, and the rest of the world. Honestly, though, whom would you turn to to lead us out of this quagmire, the calm brown woman and the stern white Bobbie, or the brick-faced pack of mad dogs that surround them?

*** *** ***

“Nonviolence means not only external physical violence but also violence of the spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.” Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr

Andrew Jackson & Donald Trump Redux

Earlier this week President Donald Trump laid a wreath on the grave of former president Andrew Jackson. The forty fifth president has advertised his admiration for the seventh one on many previous occasions. Jackson’s portrait hangs in Trump’s Oval Office.

Small wonder that Trump reveres Jackson. Nicknamed “Old Hickory” for his tough and unbending character, he is widely held to have been a political disruptor, a long haired fiery badass from the boondocks, who ended the hegemony of the overly philosophical, effete founding fathers who hailed from the staid east coast. In this view, he returned the country to “the people” who had fought and died to forge it in the fires of revolution. His passion for the common people, it has been said, created America as we know it today.

There was much more to Jackson, though. He was opinionated, temperamental, and had a volatile temper. A contemporary described him thus:

General Jackson stoops to gain the favor of the majority; but when he feels that his popularity is secure, he overthrows all obstacles in the pursuit of the objects which the community approves or of those which it does not regard with jealousy. Supported by a power that his predecessors never had, he tramples on his personal enemies, whenever they cross his path, with a facility without example; he takes upon himself the responsibility of measures that no one before him would have ventured to attempt. He even treats the national representatives with a disdain approaching to insult; he puts his veto on the laws of Congress and frequently neglects even to reply to that powerful body. He is a favorite who sometimes treats his master roughly.

–Alexis deTocqueville, Democracy in America

Former president Thomas Jefferson addressed his concerns about the possibility of a Jackson presidency to then Rep.Daniel Webster during the 1824 Adams/Jackson campaign:

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.

John Quincy Adams could not share in the flamboyant hairstyles of his day.

Jackson engaged in dueling, gambling, and sexual scandal during his public career. He was a rhetorical bully who was not above making up facts, or at least stretching the truth beyond the breaking point. He accused John Quincy Adams of using public funds to buy gambling equipment for the White House, when he had actually bought only a chessboard and a pool table, using private funds. He accused Adams of procuring American women of dubious virtue for the court of the Tsar Alexander I of Russia, in order to gain diplomatic favor while he was ambassador there.

Henry Clay on a bad hair day

After his first presidential bid in 1824, Jackson blamed his loss to Adams (settled in the House because none of the four candidates had won a majority) on a “corrupt bargain” with Speaker of the House Henry Clay, whom Adams then appointed as Secretary of State, the very post that Adams himself held before the election. This led to a four-year campaign of vituperation and rabble-rousing that culminated in a decisive electoral victory for Jackson over Adams in 1828. It also kindled a bitter political rivalry that would follow both men throughout their careers.

On taking office as president, Jackson fired scores of federal workers, from Washington lifers to remote territorial postmasters, and replaced them with Jackson loyalists. In those simpler times, he was actually able to deconstruct the administrative state, even before it had a name. There was a “we won, you lost, so just get over it” quality to his presidency, especially early on, that has a remarkably modern and familiar ring.

He was unabashedly, aggressively racist. A wealthy planter and slave owner, he once offered a $50 reward for the return of a runaway slave, and “and $10 extra for every 100 lashes any person will give him, to the amount of 300 dollars” prior to his return. Do the math: Jackson was offering to pay for three thousand lashes, without even a nod towards due process, to punish this man he accused stealing his own freedom.

Jackson’s exploits as an Indian fighter were legendary; he vowed to “exterminate” the Creeks, and nearly did. By one account, the Tallapoosa River literally ran red with the blood of the native born—warriors, women and children alike—who tried to flee across it from Jackson’s army.

Among the first achievements of Jackson’s presidency was the passage of the Indian Removal Act, which culminated in the forcible expulsion of all Cherokees from the southeastern US , on foot or in travois and wagons across the trackless frontier, to semi-arid territories west of the Mississippi. This act of ethnic cleansing resulted in the Trail of Tears, along which more than 4000 aboriginal men, women, and children died of starvation and exposure. “I feel conscious of having done my duty to my red children.”Jackson wrote, taking patronization literally. “If any failure of my good intention arises, it will be attributable to their want of duty to themselves, not to me.”

Trained as a frontier lawyer, Jackson had an an odd view of the separation of powers built into the constitution. He held that the legislative, executive and judicial branches should operate completely independently of one another, considering the action of another branch only to the extent that they agreed with it.

“The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges,” Jackson wrote, and that “the President is independent of both.” He concluded that “the authority of the Supreme Court must not…be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities .” Jackson believed that the president need afford the courts only “such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve.” When Chief Justice John Marshall’s Supreme Court ruled that the State of Georgia had no right to abrogate the sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation, Jackson simply ignored the Court, and began the Indian Removal anyway.

Jackson was fond of the executive order and the veto. During his two terms of office he vetoed more bills than all six previous presidents combined. Some of these had lasting consequences.

Congress established the Second Bank of the United States under President James Madison to help restore a national economy devastated by the War of 1812. It was modeled after the first BUS, set up by Alexander Hamilton. Jackson considered it “the Devil’s bank”—a corrupt monopoly designed to enrich its private stockholders, many of whom were foreigners, at the expense of the common people. When Congress considered the renewal of the bank’s charter in 1932, both houses passed it handily, only to see it vetoed by President Jackson. To be sure he had killed it (and out of spite towards Henry Clay, a BUS supporter), he used executive power to withdraw all federal deposits from the bank, without which it withered away. Jackson was censured by Congress for these actions, but the rebuke had no effect. During the proceedings he compared Henry Clay to”a drunken man in a brothel”

Young Jackson defies a British officer

Jackson loved a good war. At age 13, he served as a courier during the Revolutionary War until he was captured and became a prisoner of the British; all his life he bore the scars where a British officer had slashed his face and hands for refusing to clean the officer’s boots.

He earned his military chops commanding the Tennessee militia against Shawnee chief Tecumseh; Sam Houston and

Jackson Stamp of Approval

David Crockett served under him in this command. In 1815, both sides unaware that the War of 1812 had ended in 1814 under the treaty of Ghent, Jackson’s 5000 man army won a decisive victory over the British force that occupied New Orleans. Later he attacked the Seminole Indians in Florida, where he forcibly deposed the Spanish governor and served for nine months as military governor of the territory. During this time, he executed two Britons for abetting the Indians, and at least six volunteers for insufficient fealty to him.

As president, with the stated goal of freeing the government from the residual corruption of previous administrations, Jackson launched presidential investigations into all executive offices and departments. The result was a purge of many officers he deemed corrupt.

Sexual scandal invaded Jackson’s White House, as well. The Petticoat Affair involved the wife of Secretary of War John H. Eaton, who was accused of prostitution in her younger years while working in her father’s tavern. Jackson, seeing his cabinet threatened, roared to her defense, declaring her “chaste as a virgin,” and fixing the blame on the rumormongers themselves—fake news! Nevertheless, he fired nearly all his cabinet and reappointed a “Parlor Cabinet” of Washington notables for show, and a “Kitchen Cabinet” of trusted supporters for advice. He also bought the new Washington newspaper, The Globe, as an outlet for his own propaganda.

A quote from Henry Clay, an early comb-over

Among the three great influencers of political thought in early 19th century America, Jackson was alone in championing a strong president who governed by fiat. Henry Clay, known as “The Great Compromiser”, strove for consensus building, where, after good faith debate, final policies gave everybody something, and denied everybody something as well.

A quote from John C. Calhoun with his signature up-do.

John C. Calhoun favored a decentralized power where the states had the power to veto (“nullify”) specific principles of federal law with their borders. He believed in “concurrent majority” in which minorities can exercise a sort of veto power then their basic rights are infringed, a theory of governance among people similar to the principle of nullification among states. It is diametrically opposed to Jackson’s “numerical majority.” For a concurrent majority to prevail, consensus was required as a means of avoiding the “tyranny of the majority.”

A tweet from Andrew Jackson, who shared a stylist with Calhoun.

It is easy to see why Donald Trump favors Andrew Jackson, though I fear it is for the wrong reasons. His fiery temper and fierce, heartless command mirror Donald’s own temperament, and Jackson’s arrogant need for iron control over his advisers, his politics, and even the facts, must ring true to Mr. Trump. He was a rich man who justified his vast powers with a claim of an almost mythic connection with “the People.”

A prescient tweet from Daniel Webster, early adopter of the mullet

But does he also admire his deportation of the Indians, a policy that led to something very close to genocide? His disdain for powers delegated by the constitution to branches other than the executive? His ability to rally “the people” to consolidate his personal power? His cruel treatment of his own black African slaves? His execution of volunteers for questionable loyalty? His shadow cabinet? His lies?

A victory speech from Donald Trump, who takes the comb-over to a new level

Mr. Trump has recently discovered, and wants to let everyone else know, that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. I’m very curious to see what develops if he continues to watch the History Channel. Will he still fawn so over Jackson when he discovers he was a Democrat? Yes, Don, the Democratic Party is older than the GOP.

Where are the leaders of towering intellect and honor to guide us through this time of troubles? Where is our Henry Clay, to show us the path to a compromise we all can live within together? Where is our John C. Calhoun, to save us from the tyranny of a demagogue-smitten majority? Where is our Daniel Webster, to do battle with the Devil on our behalf? Where on earth are we headed now?

RESIST! Has become the mantra, the battle cry, even the very name of a progressive political group in the US. It is catchy in its brevity, emphatic in its all caps and exclamation point, and apparently commanding in its forceful tone, and tempting in the face of the political atrocities now afoot in Washington DC. Yet it has one deep flaw: it is empty rhetoric, and therefor doomed to failure. Do not lose heart though. Here are hearty ideas out there that are full of promise. They can move us forward into a bright, progressive future, once we get this RESIST! thing under control.

The problem with resistance as the core of a movement is that is reactive and lacks vision. One can be angered, but hardly inspired, by such a black cloud of gloom. Consider the Tea Party. Before it was a party, it was an idea. It began with an inspired vision: lower taxes, smaller government, fewer regulations would produce a wave of new individual freedoms that would wash over America like a tidal wave. To this end, they revived tactics that the founding fathers would have admired—running candidates for local offices and mounting grass roots campaigns to put people sympathetic to their ideas in legislatures, statehouses, and congress.

To achieve the latter in the 21st century they needed the machinery of a national party. The GOP is philosophically more closely aligned to their ideas than the Democrats are, they ran their candidates as Republicans, but campaigned for them themselves, advancing a uniform vision that eventually took over the party altogether, driving moderate Republicans into the uneasy shelter of party solidarity.

Paul Ryan

John Boehner

That is how things began to unravel. The party unified behind the party, but not the ideal. With a Democratic president and only a slim majority in the Senate, they did not have to power to advance their cause. They resorted to resistance, blocking out of hand any idea that carried the taint of the Democrats. Their own ideas atrophied, or, safely protected from being enacted and actually affecting people’s lives, grew ideological and often malignant.

Mitch McConnell

Betsy deVos

Into this vacuum moved wealthy special interests, who were able to influence Republicans and Democrats alike, who both needed torrents of cash to keep their political heads above water in a world where even state and local campaigns were flooded with national (and perhaps international) money. SCOTUS’ Citizens United decision supercharges this flume of cash. Soon the only sharks who could swim in this roiled water were the richest ones.

The Koch Brothers

The vision of the early Tea Party has washed away in the flood. The rickety structure that is left is a cartoonish representation of its founders’ ideas, shot through with holes where basic principles have been eroded by political expediency at the reed for ready cash.

All this was not lost on us. Regular American folks have watched in horror as all the power and money have been decanted for the very, very few. Suddenly the proud middle class, that built the cities and won two world wars, has become “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.” The last three presidential elections voters have demanded two things first and foremost: hope, and change. Obama promised these, but despite his substantial political gifts and oratorical power, the Obama years ended in disappointment. For whatever reasons, the government in Washington was not able to deliver much of either change or hope during those years, once the economic implosion of 2008 was repaired.

A blustering yam

Voters arrived at the polls in 2016 carrying pitchforks and torches, ready to throw the bums out of both parties. The Democrats were offered Bernie Sanders, a populist firebrand who carried his Democratic Socialist credentials proudly. The Republicans had to contend with Donald Trump, whose populist embrace was broad enough to include anyone who blamed the ills that befell America on immigrants, non-whites, and the poor rather than wealthy oligarchs like himself.

Summit Conference

Bernie was a pragmatic political scientist, whose campaign was fiery but intellectual. Donald was a showman, whose campaign was fueled by Hollywood dramatics, by arousing ethnic hatreds, and by the dispersion of “alternative facts.” The Democratic Party, veterans of smoke-filled rooms and party bosses, and equipped with a formidable political machine, was able to beat back Bernie’s horde, though just barely. The Republicans, weakened by its own internal ailments and hampered by low expectations, were overrun by the Visigoths of Trump.

Now the twisted, mutant trees that grew in the poisoned soil of the federal government are beginning to bear their awful fruit. The Republicans do not see it because they nursed these very trees through the long illness that began when the Tea Party emerged from its dark chrysalis so many years ago. The Democrats do not see it because they are as starved for new ideas as the Republicans are. They are too mired in the obligations of their past to see the ideals that once made them strong, and to build those ideals into the sort of future that most Americans want. It is no surprise that the dynastic party overlords thought that Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton were shoo-ins at the ballot box. Nor is it a surprise that the angry American people rejected them both.

Which brings me to why it is futile to RESIST! Because:

It is empty of vision. Like dog chasing a truck, what does he do when he catches one?

It is negative. Who can sustain inspiration with such a dark and empty focus?

If not RESIST!, then what? Let me suggest a three word slogan. You may keep your all caps and exclamation marks.

First—REMOVE! If you have cancer, you get rid of it. That is job one, because it is surgically necessary, not because the tumor is hateful. There are several means to achieve this: Article 2, Amendment 25, or resignation. Impeachment is preferable, since in prohibits holding public office going forward. Pence becomes president, so the damage to Republican interests is limited.

Second—RECOVER! Restore a society where Americans can work together despite holding different faiths, cultures, and skin colors. Where diversity is celebrated, and communication and compromise are the order of the day. Where government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.

Third—REBUILD! A lot of damage has been done to our society in the name of both parties. Once we have recovered an environment in which politicians know our collective wills, but are free to think for themselves and actually lead, it will be time to roll up our sleeves and to fix it. Together.

On the Progressive side, we are graced with some political thinkers who have well-crafted programs with which to begin the discussion. Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialism is a complete political structure in itself. As an experienced politician who has affected great change from outside the system, Bernie well knows that his beautiful edifice will not be imported intact, but he does us the honor of sharing it whole, that it may help shape our thinking as build our own future.

Robert Reich has a comprehensive view of the economic implications of Progressive positions, as well as experience in the Executive Branch. Nick Hanauer has strong ideas on the effects of paying workers a wage based on workers’ and society’s needs, rather than narrow stockholder imperatives, as well as entrepreneurial experience. Elizabeth Warren has knows how to use the regulatory powers of government to balance the needs of consumers and purveyors of credit, as well as experience in both the executive and legislative branches. There are many other examples. Positive, substantive programs and hard work, rather than catchy slogans, will make America great again.

For rebuilding, ideas are necessary but not sufficient. You’ve got a program, now you’ve got to make it policy. When it comes to tactics, the Tea Party got a good deal of it right. As Tip O’Neill is often quoted (though AP Washington bureau chief Byron Price had used the phrase before him): all politics is local politics. Voters are more comfortable electing new ideas to the board of selectmen or city council. As these people go on to legislatures and state houses, the new idea becomes entrenched. By the time your people burst into national prominence, people are already comfortable with your ideas.

Election reform is essential. Local elections must be locally funded and directed by local people. Gerrymandering in favor of incumbents must be eliminated. An antidote must be found for the spreading toxin of dark money in politics. Poll taxes and voter ID laws must not keep selected voters away from the ballot box. Perhaps a nonpartisan Elections Commission could monitor elections at all levels for interference and fraud, though this path is fraught with peril—there must be iron assurance that such a commission is absolutely free of party influence. At some point, the Electoral College needs to be reexamined.

So there you have it—REMOVE! RECOVER! REBUILD! A wonderful future is there for us, with a lot of spirit and hard work. Let’s get started!